Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Spoil 1.84 (Fatalism is the new black!)

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Omar Khayyam, The Rubayyat. Transl. E. Fitzgerald

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Monday, October 30, 2006

Boil 2.03

In the right corner, card-carrying atheist scientist, 'Deviiiiiil' Dawkins. Aaaand in the left corner, the contender, Terry 'The Dissenter' EagletOOOOOONNN.

"Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized."

found in London Review of Books

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Where the Wild Things are

'Ich lag', so notierte Hebel am 5. November 1805, 'in dem Hause meiner Mutter in meiner ehemaligen Schlafkammer. In der Mitte derselben stand ein Eichenbaum. Die Decke des Zimmers fehlte, und er reichte unter den Dachstuhl. Auf einzelnen Punkten des Baumes ging Feuer auf, sehr schön anzusehen. Als man nach geloschenem Feuer an der Stelle, wo es ausgeströmt, nachsah, fand man eine grünliche Harzmaterie, die nachher gallertartig wurde, und sehr viele, schmutzige grüne, häßliche Käfer, welche an derselben gierig fraßen.'

'I lay', wrote Hebel on November 5 1805, ' in my former bedchamber in my mother's house . At its centre stood an oak tree. The chamber lacked a roof and the tree reached up to the beams. Some parts of the tree caught fire which was pleasant to look at. Looking at the place from which the fire, now extinguished, had spread, one found greenish resin that later turned gelatinous, as well as a great abundance of green, ugly beetles wich greedily ate the stuff.'

Sebald, Logis in einem Landhaus, p.23

On the lam. still.

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Friday, October 20, 2006

On the lam

E.M. Cioran, in an attempt to characterize our own existential unhappiness writes about the 'holy sleep of objects', a state negated to us, consumed by consciousness. Will objects still be peaceful if and when they acquire an 'I'? Will they still be objects? Will they have instinctual urges and existential voids? Will they have to resort to the invention of religions?
Anthony Aziz & Sammy Cucher, Trajekte Nr.4, 2002, p.12.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Dieses kleine Gespenst will dwell in colder climes for some weeks.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

nichts_0.1

Die Hauptsache bleibt, daß der Mensch die Welt durch das Wissen überwunden hat. Ob er das erkannte Schicksal läßt wie es ist, oder ob er ihm die Züge eines treuen Vaters gibt; ob er das erkannte Ziel der Welt als absolutes Nichts stehen läßt, oder ob er es umwandelt in einen lichtdurchfluteten Garten des ewigen Friedens - : das ist völlige Nebensache. Wer möchte das unschuldige, gefahrlose Spiel der Phantasie unterbrechen?
"Ein Wahn der mich beglückt, ist eine Wahrheit wert, die mich zu Boden drückt." (Wieland)
Der Weise aber blickt fest und freudig dem absoluten Nichts ins Auge.

Philipp Mainländer, Philosophie der Erlösung, Bd I, Berlin 1876, 359.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Boil 2.02

A nice vignette has Bonnard at the Musée du Luxembourg with a friend, it was Vuillard, indeed, if I am not mistaken, whom he sets to distracting the museum guard while he whips out his paint-box and reworks a patch of a picture of his own that had been hanging there for years. The true workers all die in a fidget of frustration.
J. Banville, The Sea, 41

hyssyttely


Bookmark found in library book. The comfort in the knowledge that words continue to be looked up.

File 1.68

We are not skivers, we are not lazy. In fact, we are frenetically energetic, in spasms, but we are free, fatally free, of what might be called the curse of perpetuance. We finish things, while for the real worker, as the poet Valéry, I believe it was, pronounced, there is no finishing a work, only the abandoning of it.
J. Banville, The Sea, 41.